WarSclerotic

Full: Capture of US drone provides respite for Iran – The National.

Michael Theodoulou (Foreign Correspondent)

“Satan’s eye has been gouged out,” a jubilant Iranian daily trumpeted yesterday, referring to Iran’s capture of an unmanned US surveillance drone that was apparently staking out the Islamic republic’s nuclear facilities. And the deputy chief of Iran’s armed forces warned that “the US government will have to pay a high price for its unacceptable actions”.

Brigadier General Masoud Jazayeri declared: “Our defensive actions will not be limited to our geographical borders.” A leading parliamentarian, Esmail Kowsari, chipped in by warning that if another drone tried to fly over Iran, the country would “target every US military base anywhere in the world.”

Despite the lurid threats, however, analysts doubt Iran will retaliate militarily, given its inability to match American firepower. Tehran’s propaganda and intelligence coup in netting the radar-evading, RQ-170 Sentinel drone last week can instead be used by the increasingly isolated regime to drum up domestic support while bolstering its claims that Iran is the victim of American aggression.

The episode has also helped to distract attention from ever-tightening sanctions and the diplomatic fallout from the recent storming of the British Embassy in Tehran.

“It is far better to use the prospect of a western threat, which is always hanging there, to get the population to mobilise behind the regime … than actually taking action,” said Scott Lucas, an expert on Iran and US foreign policy at Birmingham University in England.

Other analysts point out that Iran has failed to retaliate against a seemingly intensifying campaign of covert operations by the US and Israel, which may be working independently or, at times, together.

There has been a spate of mysterious explosions inside Iran, nuclear scientists have been assassinated, and the uranium enrichment facility at Natanz was temporarily disrupted by the Stuxnet virus last year.

The covert campaign, together with punitive sanctions, has aimed to derail Iran’s suspected quest for nuclear weapon’s capability – an ambition Tehran denies – without having to resort to direct military action that could lead to a regional conflagration and plunge the global economy into further turmoil.

Neither the US nor Israel has acknowledged responsibility for these various attacks, although each has expressed satisfaction with any resulting setbacks to Iran’s nuclear programme.

In turn Iran, which is usually keen to blame both arch enemies for all its troubles, has gone out of its way to insist that recent explosions were accidents that had nothing to do with the ‘Great Satan’ (America) or the ‘Zionist entity’ (Israel).

The most serious ‘accident’ took place on November 12 when a huge explosion ripped through a Revolutionary Guards base 48 kilometres west of Tehran, killing at least 17 people, including a founder of Iran’s ballistic missile programme, General Hassan Tehrani Moghaddam.

So why has Iran not hit back? One theory is that despite sanctions, the mysterious explosions, assassinations and the Stuxnet attack, Tehran was steadily progressing with its nuclear programme. “And if they were to retaliate right now, they may provide [the US with the pretext] for a larger war” which could seriously set back Iran’s cherished atomic ambitions, said Trita Parsi, president of the National Iranian American Council, on relations between Iran, the US and Israel, said.

Despite heated rhetoric on both sides, neither Iran nor the US wants a military confrontation and each has shown restraint. For instance, the US had mulled plans to go into Iran and recover or destroy the captured drone but decided not to because of the “escalatory risk of it”, Dr Parsi said in an interview.

Meir Javedanfar, an Iranian-born analyst based in Israel, argues that the main goal of the US drone operation to spy on Iran was to “expose any secret nuclear activity that can be used to muscle Iran back to the negotiating table”.

He added in an interview: “I see the entire international community preferring a peaceful solution to this problem. But it seems to me the thinking in the West that (Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali) Khamenei is not going to come to the negotiating table of his own will, so he has to be forced.”

In the absence of direct dialogue with Tehran, however, covert operations could “very easily lead to a real war”, said Dr Parsi, author of A Single Roll of the Dice – Obama’s Diplomacy with Iran, published this month.

A major point of concern is the possibility of clashes between US and Iranian warships in the crowded waters of the Gulf.

Farideh Farhi, an expert on Iran at the University of Hawaii, said: “It’s a thin line that the Obama administration is trying to walk: on the one hand fanning speculation that it, along with Israel, is indeed engaged in covert operations… to unsettle Tehran, and on the other hand claiming that it is the more righteous player in this war of nerves.”

Iran is, meanwhile, revelling in the US’s embarrassment over the loss of a CIA drone 250 kilometres inside Iranian territory. Boasting technological prowess, Iran claims the aircraft was brought down last week by an “electronic ambush” by a Revolutionary Guards cyber unit.

Tehran will also hope that the drone incident complicates US relations with Afghanistan, where the stealth aircraft was based. Iran’s foreign ministry yesterday summoned the Afghan ambassador to protest the violation of Iranian airspace.

And, goading the US, Iran’s semi-official Mehr news agency reported on Thursday that Russia and Chinese officials have asked for permission to inspect the captured drone.

How it came down is unclear. The largely intact, boomerang-shaped aircraft was triumphantly paraded on Iranian television on Thursday night. US officials, rejecting Iran’s claims the aircraft was electronically hijacked, said it suffered a malfunction.

Some aviation experts said the drone is basically a glider, which could come down gently if it ran out of fuel: it would be damaged only slightly on landing unless it hit something.

Yet the drone was supposedly programmed to either automatically return to its base in Afghanistan in the event of a mishap or possibly even self-destruct. So how it was recovered by the delighted Iranians remains a mystery.

mtheoudoulou@thenational.ae

AFP: Iran’s boasts over US drone reveal inconsistencies.

(Call me an optimist, but this whole “drone” affair has struck me as fishy from the beginning.  Simply too many malfunctions one after the other, to be credible for the highest tech spy drone used by the highest tech country in the world.  If the Iranians recover data from it, my bets are that it’s disinfo that the US wanted them to believe. – JW)

By Marc Burleigh (AFP) – 3 hours ago

TEHRAN — Iran’s boast it downed a highly sophisticated US drone has handed the Islamic republic a propaganda coup while revealing numerous inconsistencies in both Iranian and US accounts of the incident.

Leading Iranian newspapers on Saturday gave front-page prominence to the story, displaying photos of what was said to be the remarkably intact RQ-170 Sentinel drone in Iran’s possession.

One daily, Vatanemrooz, bragged that “Satan’s eye has been gouged out,” repeating the characterisation of the United States as the “Great Satan.”

The ebullient media coverage, which began on Thursday with state television images of the alleged drone, eclipsed other reports, including on the threat of more sanctions on Iran and the fallout from last month’s storming of the British embassy in Tehran.

The deputy chief of Iran’s armed forces, Brigadier General Masoud Jazayeri, was quoted by the official IRNA news agency as warning that “the US government will have to pay a high price for its unacceptable actions.”

He added: “Our defensive actions will not be limited to our geographical borders.”

Iran has sent a letter of protest to the United Nations, saying the drone’s flight was part of months of “covert actions by the American government” against it.

It also summoned the Swiss ambassador, who handles US interests in Iran in the absence of US-Iran diplomatic relations, and the Afghan ambassador to lodge formal protests and demand explanations.

A letter given to the Afghan ambassador said that Iran’s airspace had been violated from his country and stressed “Afghanistan’s responsibilities as a good neighbour,” IRNA reported.

Information given by Iranian and US officials in their respective countries’ media since Tehran announced December 4 it had captured the drone has raised several inconsistencies over the affair.

The Iranian military’s joint chiefs of staff initially said its air defences managed to “shoot down” the drone as it “briefly violated” Iran’s eastern airspace.

Yet Mohammad Khazaee, Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations, said in his letter of protest that the drone flew “deep inside” Iran, close to the eastern desert town of Tabas, according to Iranian media.

“After reaching the northern part of Tabas area — 250 kilometres (150 miles) deep inside Iranian territory — the aircraft was confronted by the timely response of the Islamic republic’s armed forces,” his letter read.

And Iranian military officials were now saying the drone — displaying little damage in state media images — had not been shot down as first asserted, but rather had its controls hacked by a Revolutionary Guards cyber warfare unit.

US officials have also added to some of the mystery surrounding the incident.

Although none has spoken on the record, several told US media anonymously the drone had been on a CIA mission over Iran — and not on a US military flight over western Afghanistan, as the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force initially tried to suggest.

The officials were sceptical of Iran’s claims that it had broken through encryption technology to seize control of the aircraft, hypothesising that the drone suffered a malfunction.

But none was able to explain how the drone — programmed to either automatically return to its base in Afghanistan or possibly even self-destruct — was recovered by the Iranians.

The Associated Press: Loss of plane peels back layer in US-Iran spying.

By DOUGLAS BIRCH, Associated Press – 1 hour ago

WASHINGTON (AP) — The loss to Iran of the CIA’s surveillance drone bristling with advanced spy technology is more than a propaganda coup and intelligence windfall for the Tehran government. The plane’s capture has peeled back another layer of secrecy from expanding U.S. operations against Iran’s nuclear and military programs.

Just as the Soviet Union’s downing of the American U-2 spy plane revealed a hidden aspect of the Cold War, Iran’s recovery of the drone has shed light on the espionage that is part of U.S.-Iran hostilities.

Iran has charged the U.S. or its allies with waging a campaign of cyberwarfare and sabotage, and of assassinating some Iranian scientists. The U.S. has accused the Iranian government of helping kill U.S. troops in Afghanistan and plotting to murder the Saudi ambassador in Washington.

“It’s beginning to look like there’s a thinly-veiled, increasingly violent, global cloak-and-dagger game afoot,” Thomas Donnelly, a former government official and military expert with the American Enterprise Institute, said at a Washington conference.

The covert operations in play are “much bigger than people appreciate,” said Stephen Hadley, former national security adviser under President George W. Bush. “But the U.S. needs to be using everything it can.”

Hadley said that if Iran continues to defy U.N. resolutions and doesn’t curb its nuclear ambitions, the quiet conflict “will only get nastier.”

Some historians and foreign policy experts compared the drone incident to the Soviet Union’s 1960 downing of the U-2 spy plane and pilot Francis Gary Powers. While those two countries sparred publicly on many issues, the world only occasionally glimpsed each side’s secret operations.

“When I first heard about the drone, my first thought was thank goodness there wasn’t a pilot in it,” said Francis Gary Powers Jr., the son of the U-2 pilot and founder of the Cold War Museum.

“They were both on intelligence-gathering missions. They were both doing photo reconnaissance. They were both supporting the U.S. government’s intelligence-gathering to find out intelligence about our adversaries,” Powers said. The difference this time, Powers said, was that “there are no family members that have to be notified, there’s no prisoner in a foreign country.”

The U-2 downing shocked U.S. military planners, who thought the advanced aircraft flew too high to be hit by a Soviet missile. Likewise, Iran says it used advanced electronic warfare measures to detect, hack and bring down an RQ-170 Sentinel drone.

Iran aired TV footage Thursday of what current and former U.S. officials confirm is the missing Sentinel. The robotic aircraft suffered what appeared to be only minimal damage.

Iran protested Friday to the United Nations about what it described as “provocative and covert operations” by the U.S. The Tehran government called the flight by the drone a “blatant and unprovoked air violation” that was “tantamount to an act of hostility.”

American officials said Friday that U.S. intelligence assessments indicate that Iran played no role in the downing, either by shooting it down or using electronic or cybertechnology to force it from the sky. They contended the drone malfunctioned. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity in order to discuss the classified program.

Some U.S. experts expressed skepticism that Iran would be capable of such hacking. But others said Iran’s capacity to counter drones may have been bolstered by Russia’s decision, announced in October, to sell Tehran an advanced truck-mounted electronic intelligence system.

The RQ-170 is stealthy but not infallible, said robotics expert Peter Singer of the Brookings Institution think tank in Washington.

Singer, who has written extensively about drones, noted Russia’s announcement about the sale of an undisclosed number of truck-mounted electronic intelligence systems, called the IL-222 Avtobaza, to Tehran.

He said the equipment included “really good electronic warfare gear,” citing reports that its radars were designed to detect drones and included other equipment intended to intercept their data communications.

No country has demonstrated that it can seize control of a spy drone remotely, said Theodore Karasik, a security expert at the Dubai-based Institute for Near East and Gulf Military Analysis.

But if any could, Karasik said, the likely candidates would include China and Russia, which has conducted research on the subject. Karasik said either country might have aided Iran against the U.S.

The stealth drone is especially useful to the U.S. because it provides what is called “persistent surveillance” of Iran’s nuclear sites.

The U.S. and its allies suspect Iran is building a nuclear weapons complex under cover of a civilian program, a charge that Tehran adamantly denies.

John Pike of GlobalSecurity.org, an expert on defense and intelligence policy, said that continuous surveillance of such sites from aerial drones can help intelligence analysts track vehicles to other facilities.

The images also can tell military planners when most workers at a site are expected to be on the job, he said, in the event the president orders a military strike against Iran’s nuclear program.

“They want to bomb the buildings housing people when the largest numbers of people are present,” Pike said, noting that similar weapons-development efforts have depended much more on the technicians, scientists and other experts than on their physical structures. “The people can rebuild the buildings, the buildings cannot rebuild the people,” he said.

Experts said the drone probably carried an advanced radar system as well as other specialized sensors, including detectors for monitoring nuclear sites. If those were reverse-engineered by Iran, they could give insights into how to hide its nuclear facilities from the U.S. surveillance.

Russia, China, North Korea and others may be interested in examining the Sentinel. For example, U.S. drones have advanced engines that allow them to remain patrolling an area for days. China is thought to be struggling to master this technology.

Singer said it would be difficult for any country to exploit the technological bonanza of a downed Sentinel, but having one to pull apart will give them a start.

“Bottom line, it’s never easy to reverse-engineer anything, let alone something like a radar, but having a working or even damaged system in hand to study up close makes it a heck of a lot easier,” he said.

Francis Gary Powers Jr. noted that spy technology advances quickly.

Powers said that the CIA suspended U-2 flights for several months after his father was shot down, but by then the U.S. had launched its first reconnaissance satellite, which could gather vastly more information.

Associated Press reporters Lolita Baldor and Kimberly Dozier in Washington and Adam Schreck in Dubai contributed to this report.

The Associated Press: Syrian forces fire on funerals, battle defectors.

BEIRUT (AP) — Syrian forces fired on funeral processions and clashed with army defectors Saturday, killing at least 12 people as France called on the international community to “save the Syrian people.”

The 9-month-old uprising against Syria’s authoritarian President Bashar Assad has grown increasingly violent in recent months as once-peaceful protesters take up arms and rebel soldiers fight back against the army.

Some of the worst bloodshed has been in Homs, the central city that has emerged as the epicenter of the revolt, and there are concerns that a renewed assault could be imminent.

In a statement, the French Foreign Ministry said that France was “deeply concerned” and warned Syrian authorities that they will be held responsible for any action against the population.

“The entire international community must mobilize to save the Syrian people,” the statement said.

Despite the relentless bloodshed, Assad has refused to buckle to the pressure to step down and has shown no signs of easing his crackdown. The United Nations estimates more than 4,000 people have been killed in the military assault on dissent since March.

Syria has banned most foreign journalists and prevented local reporters from moving freely. Accounts from activists and witnesses, along with amateur videos posted online, provide key channels of information.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and the Local Coordinating Committees collected the death toll and other details of Saturday’s bloodshed using a network of sources on the ground.

The groups said security forces fired on several funeral processions and that there were fierce clashes between soldiers and army defectors. Many of the dead were in Homs.

International military intervention, such as the NATO action in Libya that helped topple longtime dictator Moammar Gadhafi, is all but out of the question in Syria, in part because of fears that the move could spread chaos across the Middle East.

But the international community has pressured Assad in other ways, primarily through sanctions. The Arab League has imposed economic sanctions and travel bans to try to end the violence, adding to measures already taken by the U.S., European Union, Turkey and others.

An Arab League official said the bloc would meet toward the end of the coming week in Cairo to discuss the situation in Syria and an Arab-brokered plan calling for sending an observer mission into the country. Syria has agreed to the plan in principle but with several major conditions, including the annulment of sanctions against Damascus.

Associated Press writer Aya Batrawy contributed to this report from Cairo.

Waiting for Bashar Assad’s exit – Arab News.

The Syrian leader seems to be living in an alternate reality of his own making

As bloodshed mounts in Syria, pundits argue, President Bashar Assad has finally realized that the security approach is a grave mistake. As tensions in Syria mount, it seems that the security-minded decision makers are on the retreat.

Soon, Assad is expected to confirm his agreement to form a national government that includes opposition and independents. This new government’s mission will be to oversee parliamentary elections and prepare for presidential elections. There will be no veto on any political party or person, elections will be internationally monitored, and the outcome will be honored. According to the new agreement, presidency will be a four-year term provided that a president cannot rule more than two terms. Should this initiative succeed, it will close a chapter of political history and turn a new leaf.

And yet, latest events reveal that there is a gap within the presidency between those who still believe in the security solution to the crisis and those moderates who make the case for the necessity of respecting the Syrian people and responding to their demands. From the beginning, moderates argued for a benign approach, a trial of officials responsible for escalation in Dar’a, and political reform.

This moderate trend was both isolated at the beginning of the crisis and accused of opportunism. Extremists believed that there was a plot and that employing force was a necessity. However, eventually, they all found out that the security approach has simply backfired as it created domestic tension and made a reform initiative difficult. On the other hand, now Assad is no longer calling the shots. The impact of the Syrian street, regional and international public opinion, and the Arab proactive stand now influence decision-making in Syria. Worse still, was when the cooperative relations with Ankara were transformed into enmity, as the probability of war increased and the chances of peace and diplomacy receded.

What all observers are wondering is: Will Assad step down? Will Syria transform into a democratic political system instead of this patriarchic and familial one? Will Assad leave Syria for its people without destruction, bloodshed, or civil war? Is Assad’s decision a Syrian one or a regional one in which Iran and Hezbollah also have a say? Will he flee the country undetected?

Many pundits also ponder the Iranian position. Interestingly, some even talk about Gulf diplomacy playing a part and a political reform package in the near future. Consultative councils in the Gulf will soon meet in Jeddah. Also, the former head of the Saudi intelligence, Prince Turkey Faisal, stressed that the Gulf states should stand up to external challenges. He also calls for a unified Gulf consultative council, common currency, and a common army. Additionally, Prince Muqrin bin Abdulaziz, the head of the Saudi intelligence, confirms that the Gulf states are very guarded because of the Iranian nuclear file. US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta said at Brookings Institute that Iran should be a nuclear-free country, as Tehran is becoming a source of serious threat to the region. Indeed, Arab intellectuals warn against the perils of the Persian expansion in the region, should they go unchallenged.

Another senior official in the American National Security Council also confirmed that the Malki government is on its way out and a rearrangement of the political process in Iraq to restore its balance is under way. Maliki is moving in various directions to pre-empt this scenario and accordingly he signed strategic and security agreements with Iran. He also received the deputy of Waly Al-Faqih and supports Assad’s government. Meanwhile, Hezbollah is attempting to rebuild its relations with leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood, generously spend the Iranian money in Tunisia, Libya, and Egypt, and the party provides some presidential candidates blank checks to help them mobilize support in presidential and parliamentary elections in Tunisia and Egypt. Additionally, Iran is backing the Houthis in Yemen.

Apparently, a new political environment is in the making. America is retreating and civilized Islamic groups are on the ascendance. Also, there is a Western attempt to generalize a new model that is based on decentralization. This means a model that is based on a weak central government vis-à-vis the periphery.

The reorganization of the Syrian government will certainly have an impact on Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, and Jordan. It will reinforce the power of the Muslim Brotherhood and the civilized reform movements, particularly when the Brothers’ discourse is closer to the civil discourse as is the case in Tunisia and Egypt.

Now, we are all waiting on Assad’s next speech. But he may let us down and will come with pledges that cannot be implemented and in the context of buying time. In an interview with ABC’s Barbara Walters on Dec. 6, that he had requested, Assad vehemently denied ordering a deadly crackdown in Syria – a denial that is of paramount importance as it may cause more military defections.

“No government in the world kills its people unless it’s led by a crazy person,” he said in the interview. Which begs the question: Is Assad insane, a liar, or is he simply living in an alternate reality of his and his cronies’ own making, in which some “other” delinquent forces are to blame for the crisis? You decide.

(alibluwi@yahoo.com)

West warns Syria against storming rebel city | Reuters.

Supporters of Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad wave flags during a rally at al-Sabaa Bahrat square in Damascus, December 9, 2011.

Credit: Reuters/ Stringer

BEIRUT (Reuters) – France called on world powers to “save the Syrian people” on Saturday as it joined the United States and Britain in raising an alarm that President Bashar al-Assad’s forces may be about to storm the rebel stronghold of Homs.

In Damascus, the government denied any crackdown, while accusing its opponents of taking up arms and warning the rebels’ supporters in the West that Syria could count on Russia, China and others to oppose any foreign intervention in its affairs.

In Homs, a pro-democracy activist said there was no clear sign of a troop build-up other campaigners had reported around the city on Friday. Opposition groups have called for businesses and labour not to work on Sunday, the first day of the working week in Syria, in what they have called a “Strike for Dignity”.

“France is extremely concerned about information of a massive military operation being prepared by Syrian security authorities against the city of Homs,” French Foreign Ministry spokesman Bernard Valero said, echoing concerns raised in Washington, London and neighbouring Turkey.

“France warns the Syrian government and will hold the Syrian authorities responsible for any action against the population.

“The entire international community must mobilise itself to save the Syrian people,” Valero added in a statement.

On Friday, a U.S. State Department spokeswoman said: “It is extremely concerning that in places like Homs we have huge number of reports that they are preparing something large-scale.

“They are not going to be able to hide who’s responsible if there is a major assault on the weekend.”

“NO CRACKDOWN”

Syria rejected that characterisation of events: “There is no policy of crackdown,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Jihad Makdesi told Reuters in an e-mail. “The Syrian forces are there to protect civilians and maintain law and order that is breached by those who are carrying arms against the State.

“The story of peacefulness of the protest is no longer a valid story in some places,” he said. “Syria needs evolution and not armed confrontation.”

Separately, the official Syrian news agency SANA said the so-called BRICS group of developing economic powers – Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa – “reiterated its absolute rejection to any interference in Syrian affairs”.

It cited a message from Russia’s U.N. ambassador Vitaly Churkin to the United Nations Security Council, which has been the forum for sharp divisions over Syria between the Western powers on the one hand and Russia and China on the other.

Such differences, and Syria’s pivotal position at the heart of a web of regional conflicts, mean few see much possibility for the kind of Western military action seen this year in Libya.

The Arab League has been pressing Syria, under threat of sanctions, to remove troops from its towns and let in observers. Egypt’s MENA news agency said on Saturday Arab foreign ministers will meet in Cairo at the end of the week to discuss a response to what it called a conditional Syrian acceptance of monitors.

Turkey warned Syria on Friday it would act to protect itself if the crushing of protest threatened regional security and unleashed a tide of refugees on its borders.

The opposition Syrian National Council said in a statement about Homs on Friday: “News reports, videos and information from activists indicate that the regime is preparing to commit a massacre in the city to extinguish the flame of the revolution and ‘discipline’ the rest of Syria’s cities.”

However, some activists questioned whether the SNC statement was intended principally to galvanise international action.

One campaigner in Homs, a city of 1.5 million, saw little sign of an imminent offensive on Saturday: “I have been hearing this since yesterday. I did a tour around the city and I did not see anything unusual.

“It’s the same checkpoints and the same number of soldiers.”

DEATH TOLL

At least 24 Syrians were shot dead as protesters took to the streets following Friday prayers, according to a network of anti-government activists reporting events to a website based in Britain. Other activist sources put the toll as high as 37 dead.

At least 10 were killed in Homs, where Arab television showed demonstrators chanting “Bashar is an enemy of humanity.”

Peaceful demonstrations calling for reform began in Syria in March, inspired by the Arab Spring, but were met almost from the outset by lethal force. Activists say about 4,600 Syrians have been killed, about a quarter of them from security forces.

President Assad says some “mistakes” may have occurred but denies giving any shoot-to-kill order over the past 9 months of violent repression, which has prompted defections from the military and led to the creation of a rebel Free Syrian Army.

The Syrian National Council and the Free Syrian Army are separate organisations. The Council has urged the rebel army to stop attacking the army and limit itself to purely “defensive” actions, in order to avoid starting an all-out civil war.

U.N. rights chief Navi Pillay repeated her call for investigators to be allowed into Syria. She is due to brief the Security Council on Monday at the request of France. ID:nN1E7B80VR]

In Oslo, where this year’s Nobel Peace Prize was presented on Saturday to, among others, a Yemeni campaigner whose part in the Arab spring helped push that country’s veteran autocrat to the exit, the head of the prize selection panel said Assad would inevitably have to yield before the “wind of history”.

(Additional reporting by Mariam Karouny in Beirut, Stefano Ambrogi and Alastair Macdonald in London, Patrick Werr in Cairo and John Irish in Paris; Editing by Alastair Macdonald

Roger L. Simon: Obama telling Iran, “Enjoy your nukes” | NewsOK.com.

Barack Obama and his minions — Hillary Clinton, who these days disses Israel every chance she gets, and Ambassador Howard Gutman, who thinks Islamic anti-Semitism began at a Tel Aviv falafel shop a week ago Thursday — love to put pressure on our supposed ally … but on Iran‘s despicable mullahs, not so much.

So it should be no surprise that our president is pushing back on last week’s Senate 100-0 vote (how often does that happen?) for stronger sanctions on Iran.

What’s behind this? The mind drifts to two key events of recent years:

First, and most obviously, the extraordinary silence of Barack Obama during the Iranian democracy demonstrations — one of the more emotionally disconnected displays of any modern president. Every decent person in the Western world was rooting for the demonstrators to rid themselves of the mullahs, except for our president, who didn’t even give them moral support, preferring to do his own absurd and self-centered negotiation with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Second is the 2003 going-away party and Israel bash, with Obama in attendance, for pro-Palestinian professor Rashid Khalidi, recorded on a videotape still sequestered in a vault at the Los Angeles Times. The Times, which was quite willing to run the WikiLeaks, is withholding it for reasons that have long since become unviable.

Which side are you on, as the old song goes.

Iranian nukes don’t really seem to matter to Barack Obama. He pays lip service, on occasion, to what a bad idea they are, but not nearly the lip service paid by his Defense Secretary Leon Panetta to how bad the Israelis are.

And now, with the chips down and the Congress willing to act, Obama says nay. Well, what could be more obvious? The game is fixed. A little espionage around the edges is OK, but if anyone wants to do anything serious, like having genuine sanctions as opposed to phony (show) sanctions, this administration backs away.

The excuse is that our European friends are dependent on Iranian oil and playing an even worse double-game than we are — and we have to cooperate with our allies, no? Leave aside for a moment that this administration could help solve this problem by opening the spigots here.

How do you think this is viewed in Tehran? When the mullahs see our president trying to get Congress to scale down the sanctions, do they think their nuclear facilities are in any real danger from this man?

And what about the prime minister of Israel? What is he supposed to think when observing this, while listening to the endless nattering from the administration about peace talks with an adversary that has demonstrated no interest in peace.

No wonder the administration is nervous about the Israelis acting on their own. They should be.

Amb. Marc Ginsberg: “Preoccupy” the Atomic Ayatollahs.

Former U.S. Ambassador to Morocco

It took the best of international detective work against a determined master of the dark arts and subversion, but at long last the UN’s intrepid nuclear inspectors caught Iran red-handed in the act of atomic bomb construction. In an unusually harsh, unprecedented November 18, 2011 assessment, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) most recent report constitutes a clear and relatively convincing indictment of Iran’s so-called peaceful nuclear program.

IAEA investigators revealed irrefutable evidence that Iran:

1. Created computer models of nuclear explosions.
2. Conducted experiments on nuclear bomb triggers.
3. Engaged in research on how to transform enriched uranium into an actual warhead.

And that’s not all.

The IAEA report revealed how Iran enlisted the services of a former Soviet nuclear scientist to enable it to deploy its enriched uranium onto an actual missile warhead.

Iran is undeniably a state sponsor of the big lie. If these are IAEA approved elements of a NPT-compliant “peaceful” nuclear program, well, then, I have a bridge over the East River for sale.

Taking its orders from Tehran, Iran’s diehard legions of apologists wasted no time refuting the IAEA and its findings by attempting to shoot the messenger (i.e., the IAEA) — a favorite tactic of Iran’s amen choir. Others resorted to the age old bromide excusing Iran’s illicit nuclear program on the grounds that Israel and the U.S. have nuclear weapons.

The atomic ayatollahs are about to reach the end of the road in their showdown with the west. This moment of reckoning has come far more quickly than anyone had contemplated.

What now to do?

“The toughest sanctions on Iran ever” (President Obama’s words) had one goal: namely, to force Iran to end its illegal nuclear program. Even by its own admission, sanctions have stung, but have not deterred Tehran. In other words, existing economic sanctions have failed.

So while the Obama administration deserves high marks for constructing an innovative and biting sanctions regime, the easy part is over. The president is not doing himself any service by patting himself on the back for the sanctions the U.S. has inflicted on Iran. It has the air of the old adage “but for the patient dying, the operation was a complete success!”

And as the clock ticks to midnight, the administration has developed a bad case of cold feet, contesting congressional calls to impose financial sanctions on Iran’s central bank, which would have the effect of preventing Iran from receiving income from its principal oil customers; namely India and South Korea.

Its cause for hesitation: the White House is concerned that the consequence of this sanction would cause the price of oil to escalate in an election year because Iran — the world’s third largest oil exporter — would be unable to receive payment for its oil, and would cut its exports inducing global prices to spike. It is not an unreasonable concern given the pain Americans already feel at the pump.

But when the Secretary of Defense bares his understandable hesitations against the use of military force, which he did last Friday — no matter how meritorious they are — it only undermines the signals his administration is broadcasting. Sometimes one wonders whether the left hand and right are working at cross purposes. If all options are on the table, why is the Secretary of Defense throwing ice water on the option in public?

Its not hard to see that President Obama’s Iran policy has been focused on kicking the Iran nuclear can down the street as long as possible, hoping that a miracle in its diplomacy would rescue it from facing the tough choices it itself asserts are necessary.

But between unfair Republican bellicosity, accusing Obama of “appeasement” and the IAEA’s findings, the White House is being backed into a corner without a coherent strategy going forward despite its protests that Iran with a bomb is a direct national security threat to the United States.

So, is there anything more that can be done to turn back Iran’s drop dead hour before a mushroom cloud erupts over an Iranian desert testing ground?

Covert Sabotage

More robust and coordinated covert action by western and Arab nations against Iran’s nuclear facilities must become an urgent priority. Mysterious computer viruses such as the Stuxnet worm, undeniably set back Iran’s spinning uranium enrichment centrifuges. But their success was short lived. Assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists may have created a climate of fear, but also have not prevented Iran from moving more quickly to its finish line.

Last week’s “accidental” explosion which destroyed one of Iran’s largest solid-fuel missile construction bases was a gift that may keep on giving. It not only killed a key Revolutionary Guard commander in charge of missile solid fuel rocket development, the explosion also compels Iran to rely more on liquid fuel missiles that are easier to detect on the ground via satellite surveillance.

The escalating use of stealth drones conducting surveillance above Iran is an indication that the administration is not reluctant to push the covert envelope. The question is what to do with the treasure trove of data the drone surveillance program yielded?

Accidents do happen. Bigger “accidents” are needed. Rather than relying further on economic sanctions, we need a more effective “accidents regime” that may do what economic sanctions have failed to do. Of course, Iran has demonstrated a huge tolerance for international isolation and economic pain. There is no assurance that escalating covert action will achieve a better outcome than economic sanctions… but its worth the risk given the stakes involved.

There are targets aplenty throughout Iran, including remote pipelines, ships bound for Iran supplying oil distillates, banking computer networks, and aviation facilities. And the regime has a lot of enemies, including many of its own citizens to do the dirty work. No return U.S. address needed.

Shipping Embargoes

Draconian as it sounds, a quarantine of international shipping to Iran should be on the table. Although an overt embargo is an act of war, a market-driven embargo on Iran’s ports by shipping companies worried about escalating insurance costs may do the trick. How? Denying shipping companies that trade with Iran access to U.S. and allied financial institutions and reinsurers could do what a more risky front line naval embargo would do.

Additionally, as ironic as it may sound, the world’s third largest oil exporter has to import refined gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel. A concerted U.S. and European financial and insurance embargo on companies that export refined petroleum products to Iran should be implemented.

A More Effective Persian Gulf Trade Embargo

As much as Sunni Arab states detest Shiite Iran’s regional aspirations, a continuing supply of trade and consumer goods ply the waters between Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates. Privately, members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) have imposed some restrictions on cross-Gulf trade, but not enough given what could be smuggled under the camouflage of commercial goods.

In the final analysis there are no magic bullets given Russia’s and China’s refusal to really turn the financial screws on Iran that could bring the Ayatollahs to their knees. But there is a lot more pain that can be inflicted on Tehran without resort to overt military attack. It’s time to take off the gloves and put on the black camouflage fatigues.

Obama’s Iran policy shifts to containment – The Washington Post.

By Michael Makovsky and Blaise Misztal, Saturday, December 10, 3:20 AM

As recent events underscore the growing Iranian nuclear threat, the Obama administration appears to be pivoting toward a policy of containment. The emphasis of its rhetoric has shifted from preventing an “unacceptable” nuclear Iran to “isolating” it. When coupled with recent weaker action against Iran, we fear it signals a tacit policy change.

A few days after his election, President Obama called a nuclear Iran “unacceptable.” In February 2009, he pledged “to use all elements of American power to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon.” By the next year, after a first round of negotiations with Iran had failed and the United Nations and Congress passed tougher sanctions, that pledge had softened. “The United States,” Obama said in July 2010, is “determined to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.”

The administration did not dwell publicly on Iran until the Oct. 11 announcement that it foiled an Iranian terrorist plot on U.S. soil — against the Saudi ambassador — and the International Atomic Energy Agency presented damning evidence of Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons. The president’s response, a Nov. 21 statement announcing new sanctions, marked another subtle, yet significant, rhetorical shift. It downgraded the Iranian threat from “unacceptable” to one of the several “highest national security priorities.” Obama concluded: “Iran has chosen the path of international isolation. . . . [T]he United States will continue to find ways . . . to isolate and increase the pressure upon the Iranian regime.” Yet isolation now appears a goal in its own right, uncoupled from the objective of preventing nuclear capabilities.

The same rhetoric was more explicit in a speech the next day by national security adviser Thomas Donilon. “Iran today,” he declared, “is fundamentally weaker, more isolated, more vulnerable and badly discredited than ever.” Left unsaid was that Iran’s nuclear program is more advanced, more capable and closer than ever to achieving nuclear weapons.

Despite citing Obama’s July 2010 speech, Donilon’s overwhelming theme was isolation. He used some form of the word “isolate” 17 times, “prevent” only three and “unacceptable” not once. Donilon’s thesis was: “We will continue to build a regional defense architecture that prevents Iran from threatening its neighbors. We will continue to deepen Iran’s isolation, regionally and globally.” Reminiscent of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s 2009 promise to extend a “defense umbrella” over Iran’s neighbors, Donilon’s comments reveal a focus on managing, rather than neutralizing, the Iranian threat.

Administration actions reflect this rhetorical shift. Initially, while pledging to prevent a nuclear Iran at all costs, the administration focused on diplomacy and then a dual-track approach, including sanctions. The latter reached its apogee in mid-2010 with tough U.S. and international sanctions. The administration has not sufficiently enforced these sanctions, nor pressed for full-fledged sanctions against Iran’s central bank, a move backed this month by all 100 senators. Faced with international resistance, the administration’s resolve weakened, and it failed to persuade China, Russia and other countries to support measures firm enough to potentially compel Iran to cease its nuclear program.

Moreover, the administration’s lack of support for a military option undermines its commitment to preventing a nuclear Iran and undercuts its ability to achieve broader international support for sanctions. Despite repeated assertions that they are keeping “all options on the table,” officials seem to be conditioning Americans to view the prospect of a military strike negatively. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and his predecessor, Robert Gates, have effectively ruled out U.S. military action by constantly highlighting its risks. Twice recently, Panetta emphasized a strike’s “unintended consequences.” He listed five categories of them in a Dec. 2 speech in which he also referred, many times, to some form of “isolation.” This suggests the administration isn’t prepared to prevent a nuclear Iran at all costs. Nor has it made any credible preparations, such as military exercises and deployments, for a strike.

The administration’s alternative to prevention — isolation — implies containment. But a nuclear Iran could not be contained as the Soviet Union was. Containment requires credibility, a resource United States will have drained if, after numerous warnings to the contrary, we permit Tehran to cross the nuclear threshold. And no matter how isolated, a nuclear Iran is likely to spark a destabilizing cascade of proliferation. Despite its own isolation, North Korea shares its nuclear technology with its terrorist proxies. Iran might, too. Tehran’s enemies, led by Saudi Arabia, would seek safety behind their own nuclear deterrent. And Iran and Israel, as former defense undersecretary Eric Edelman has argued, would have incentives to initiate a nuclear first strike, potentially dragging the United States into the conflict. All this would severely diminish U.S. influence and drive up oil prices.

The Obama administration needs to regain its clarity and refocus its rhetoric and action toward preventing a nuclear Iran. It should do so, if necessary, by “all elements of American power.”

Michael Makovsky, a Pentagon official during the George W. Bush administration, directs the Bipartisan Policy Center’s National Security Project, including its Iran initiative. Blaise Misztal is associate director of the center’s National Security Project.

CIA Spy Plane Loss Exposes Covert US-Iran Conflict | Fox News.

The loss to Iran of the CIA’s surveillance drone bristling with advanced spy technology is more than a propaganda coup and intelligence windfall for the Tehran government. The plane’s capture has peeled back another layer of secrecy from expanding U.S. operations against Iran’s nuclear and military programs.

Like the Soviet Union’s downing of the American U-2 spy plane during the Cold War, Iran’s recovery of the drone has cast a spotlight on part of the U.S.-Iran spycraft.

Iran has charged the U.S. or its allies with waging a campaign of cyberwarfare and sabotage, and of assassinating some Iranian scientists. The U.S. has accused the Iranian government of helping kill U.S. troops in Afghanistan and plotting to murder the Saudi ambassador in Washington.

“It’s beginning to look like there’s a thinly-veiled, increasingly violent, global cloak-and-dagger game afoot,” Thomas Donnelly, a former government official and military expert with the American Enterprise Institute, said at a Washington conference.

The covert operations in play are “much bigger than people appreciate,” said Stephen Hadley, former national security adviser under President George W. Bush. “But the U.S. needs to be using everything it can.”

Hadley said that if Iran continues to defy U.N. resolutions and doesn’t curb its nuclear ambitions, the quiet conflict “will only get nastier.”

Some historians and foreign policy experts compared the drone incident to the Soviet Union’s 1960 downing of the U-2 spy plane and pilot Francis Gary Powers. While those two countries sparred publicly on many issues, the world only occasionally glimpsed each side’s secret operations.

“When I first heard about the drone, my first thought was thank goodness there wasn’t a pilot in it,” said Francis Gary Powers Jr., the son of the U-2 pilot and founder of the Cold War Museum.

“They were both on intelligence-gathering missions. They were both doing photo reconnaissance. They were both supporting the U.S. government’s intelligence-gathering to find out intelligence about our adversaries,” Powers said. The difference this time, Powers said, was that “there are no family members that have to be notified, there’s no prisoner in a foreign country.”

The U-2 downing shocked U.S. military planners, who thought the advanced aircraft flew too high to be hit by a Soviet missile. Likewise, Iran says it used advanced electronic warfare measures to detect, hack and bring down an RQ-170 Sentinel drone.

Iran aired TV footage Thursday of what current and former U.S. officials confirm is the missing Sentinel. The robotic aircraft suffered what appeared to be only minimal damage.

Iran protested Friday to the United Nations about what it described as “provocative and covert operations” by the U.S. The Tehran government called the flight by the drone a “blatant and unprovoked air violation” that was “tantamount to an act of hostility.”

American officials said Friday that U.S. intelligence assessments indicate that Iran played no role in the downing, either by shooting it down or using electronic or cybertechnology to force it from the sky. They contended the drone malfunctioned. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity in order to discuss the classified program.

Some U.S. experts expressed skepticism that Iran would be capable of such hacking. But others said Iran’s capacity to counter drones may have been bolstered by Russia’s decision, announced in October, to sell Tehran an advanced truck-mounted electronic intelligence system.

The RQ-170 is stealthy but not infallible, said robotics expert Peter Singer of the Brookings Institution think tank in Washington.

Singer, who has written extensively about drones, noted Russia’s announcement about the sale of an undisclosed number of truck-mounted electronic intelligence systems, called the IL-222 Avtobaza, to Tehran.

He said the equipment included “really good electronic warfare gear,” citing reports that its radars were designed to detect drones and included other equipment intended to intercept their data communications.

No country has demonstrated that it can seize control of a spy drone remotely, said Theodore Karasik, a security expert at the Dubai-based Institute for Near East and Gulf Military Analysis.

But if any could, Karasik said, the likely candidates would include China and Russia, which has conducted research on the subject. Karasik said either country might have aided Iran against the U.S.

The stealth drone is especially useful to the U.S. because it provides what is called “persistent surveillance” of Iran’s nuclear sites.

The U.S. and its allies suspect Iran is building a nuclear weapons complex under cover of a civilian program, a charge that Tehran adamantly denies.

John Pike of GlobalSecurity.org, an expert on defense and intelligence policy, said that continuous surveillance of such sites from aerial drones can help intelligence analysts track vehicles to other facilities.

The images also can tell military planners when most workers at a site are expected to be on the job, he said, in the event the president orders a military strike against Iran’s nuclear program.

“They want to bomb the buildings housing people when the largest numbers of people are present,” Pike said, noting that similar weapons-development efforts have depended much more on the technicians, scientists and other experts than on their physical structures. “The people can rebuild the buildings, the buildings cannot rebuild the people,” he said.

Experts said the drone probably carried an advanced radar system as well as other specialized sensors, including detectors for monitoring nuclear sites. If those were reverse-engineered by Iran, they could give insights into how to hide its nuclear facilities from the U.S. surveillance.

Russia, China, North Korea and others may be interested in examining the Sentinel. For example, U.S. drones have advanced engines that allow them to remain patrolling an area for days. China is thought to be struggling to master this technology.

Singer said it would be difficult for any country to exploit the technological bonanza of a downed Sentinel, but having one to pull apart will give them a start.

“Bottom line, it’s never easy to reverse-engineer anything, let alone something like a radar, but having a working or even damaged system in hand to study up close makes it a heck of a lot easier,” he said.

Francis Gary Powers Jr. noted that spy technology advances quickly.

Powers said that the CIA suspended U-2 flights for several months after his father was shot down, but by then the U.S. had launched its first reconnaissance satellite, which could gather vastly more information.